Generate Armenian subtitles for your Turkish videos

From the Latin alphabet to the Armenian script

Turkish is written in the Latin alphabet and Armenian in the Armenian script, so the exported file uses a different writing system from the audio that produced it. The subtitle formats handle that — SRT and VTT are plain text and carry any script — but the font in whatever plays the file has to cover it.

This is the most common reason a Armenian subtitle track looks correct in an editor and shows boxes or blanks on a device. Test on the target platform before you publish a batch.

How Turkish audio becomes Armenian subtitles

Audio in Turkish (Türkçe) is transcribed first, then translated into Armenian (Հայերեն). Because the translation runs on the transcript rather than on the audio, the Armenian subtitle file keeps the timings of the original Turkish speech — each line appears at the moment it was actually said.

Why translate Turkish video into Armenian

Turkish is spoken principally in Turkey and Cyprus; Armenian in Armenia, and Armenian communities worldwide. A Armenian subtitle track is what lets one recording reach both audiences without re-recording, re-editing or dubbing it.

Because subtitles are a separate file rather than part of the picture, you can attach several language tracks to the same video and let viewers pick.

About the Turkish audio

Turkish is agglutinative: a single word can carry what English needs a clause for, so word counts are low and individual words are long. Spelling is highly regular, which makes it transcribe cleanly.

About the Armenian subtitles

Armenian has an alphabet used for no other language. Eastern Armenian, spoken in Armenia and Iran, and Western Armenian, carried by the diaspora, differ enough in pronunciation and grammar that a speaker of one notices the other immediately, and both transcribe into the same script. Armenian punctuation is its own: the full stop is a colon-like mark, and question and exclamation marks sit above a vowel rather than at the end of the sentence.

What a Turkish to Armenian subtitle file looks like

Four lines of Turkish speech, transcribed and translated, as they come out of the exported SRT. The timings are the Turkish speaker's — translation does not move them, which is why the file drops onto the original video unchanged.

1
00:00:01,000 --> 00:00:03,240
Ինձ լավ լսո՞ւմ եք։

2
00:00:03,600 --> 00:00:06,120
Մանրամասները կկիսվեմ մի պահից։

3
00:00:06,480 --> 00:00:09,300
Ձեր հարցերը գրեք ներքևում։

4
00:00:09,700 --> 00:00:12,040
Այսօրվա համար այսքանը։

What to check before publishing

• Names and places, which translation handles less reliably than ordinary prose.
• Idiom — a phrase that is natural in Turkish may need loosening to read well in Armenian.
• That the Armenian script renders in your player, not just in the editor you exported from.
• Timing on fast exchanges, where two speakers overlap.